I remember those days also, all too well! I was probably one of the earliest subscribers; when did EETimes start? As a regular in the Immortal Works contests, I'm afraid that the current incarnation doesn't have quite the same cachet the original had! It was a lot more challenging to find some detail in an Old master painting to inspire a caption than looking at a cartoon! I still have the original pages from each Immortality I gained, along with a big badge-like pin trumpeting "I'm Immortal" awarded by EET. Regarding the PC, I was 15 years past BSEE and MSEE when i went to work at Siemens Telecommunications in Boca Raton for a couple of years, across the street from the IBM facility that was busy creating their first PC (some of my fellow ex-pats from Motorola were on that team).

I was working at one of the first computer stores in the Chicago area at that time and had to put up daily with the question delivered in a derisive manner, "What could you possibly use a home computer for?" That and the statement delivered as immutable fact that, "Businesses will never buy a personal computer to do their processing."